Wonderland beginnings
by The Layman
Summary: This is the beginning of Orihime's journey through a strange land where everyone wants to kill her. Contains the first three chapter of "Wonderland".


_What you're about to read is the story of a girl who had a fantastic journey through a land of strange things, though things aren't all as they seem. The things you're about to experience will be strange and disturbing, and most certainly twisted. But don't worry dear children, it's all part of the fun. If up is down and wrong is right, the what follows must be nothing but good. So keeping that in mind, let's take a look into the magical and frightening world of..._

**Wonderland**

**Prologue: Into Madness**

When Orihime opened her eyes she was falling, the wind rushing passed her face as she got ever closer to something shimmering in the distance. Or maybe the Shimmering was getting closer to her she couldn't tell; there was just blackness in all directions around her, with the occasional random object floating passed her: a teapot, a rat's tail, a severed hand, a playing card (one of the Hearts suite, she couldn't tell which), and a bloody kitchen knife. They were moving slower than the wind felt against her cheeks, though for some reason she could bring herself to find any of this odd. She knew it wasn't normal for this to be happening, but at the same time it felt like things were supposed to be this way.

More objects flew passed her, now at varying speeds. She didn't pay them any mind though, since the Shimmering was getting closer. (Or she was getting closer to it.)

Soon she reached the Shimmering, coming to a smooth stop right above it. It had looked like water before, but she could see it was clearly black, like tar. It wasn't tar, as when she drew her hand through it, it moved and felt just like water. She drew her hand out, and it was stained black. She hope it wasn't toxic.

As she held her hand out in front of her face, she thought she saw something moving on the other side of the Shimmering, something white. The White Thing looked vaguely human shaped...maybe they could tell her what was going on. She reached down to the Shimmering again, this time trying to reach clear to the other side.

A moment later she felt herself passing through the Shimmering, emerging upwards into a room with four crooked walls with white and black stripes running down them, splotches of blood splayed on them at random.

"Quite homey, isn't it?" a voice said from behind her, "My compliments to the decorator." She turn around, intent on learning who the new speaker was; maybe they were the White Thing from before.

She saw a man standing behind her, not much older than she was. He was handsome in a rugged kind of way, if one liked that sort of thing. He had strange blue hair, but that didn't surprise her. (She was getting the impression that nothing would shock her much here.) He was standing to the side so she couldn't see all his face, and he was halfway in the shadows (What was causing them?), but for some reason his eery, maniacal smile seemed to have a luminosity of its own.

"...Well?" he asked expectantly.

"Excuse me?" she said, tilting her head to the side.

"I just paid you a compliment," he said, tapping the side of his head, "you're supposed to say 'thank you'. Don't you know anything?"

"Do I know you?" Orihime asked.

"Sort of," the man shrugged. He bowed with a grand flourish, "You may call me Grimmjow, my Princess. And might I say, you're looking _lovely_ today."

He stepped to the side, revealing a full length mirror. In the mirror Orihime saw her reflection, only it was upside down.

"Oops," Grimmjow said, turning the mirror halfway around, "had the darn thing backwards!"

Now her reflection was was the right way up. She was wearing an old dress, like something out of England in the early 1900's, but so ratty and threadbare that it was a wonder (Hehe, geddit?) that it was still hanging on her shoulders. Her chestnut brown hair hung limply over her shoulders, with a little bit of blood matted in it. She was missing her left eye, which was the source of the matted blood.

She brought her left hand up to her empty eye socket, feeling some blood that hadn't congealed yet.

"Ooh, that's bad; you might want to cover that up," Grimmjow winced. He ripped a bit off of what remained of one of the sleeves of Orihime's dress and tied it around her head so it covered her missing eye, "There we are!"

"Thank you," she said, giving a small bow. "Um, could you tell me where this is?"

Grimmjow suddenly began cackling wildly.

"You don't know?!" he asked, trying to compose himself enough to speak clearly. "Why Princess, this is _your_ world! The world of your own creation; your own person Wonderland!" He spread his arms open in a grand flourish.

A smile crept onto Orihime's lips.

"So where do you want to go first?"

"Well," Orihime said, "I saw a White Thing in this room before, I'd like to know where that went." She regarded him in his all white attire (white pants and a white button up shirt that he left open), "That wasn't you, was it?"

"Oh you must mean the little Rabbit," the man said, holding out his hand palm up; on it appeared a little image of a girl in a simple white tattered sundress. Her hair was short and black, and one thick lock of fell between her eyes and across her face. "She was here a minute ago."

"Where did she go then?" Orihime looked around, not seeing any doors. The only things in the room beside herself and the man were the walls and the blood on them. (The mirror had vanished as well.)

"Why out the door, of course!" Grimmjow said, turning Orihime's head to the side.

A metal plated door stood on one of the walls, with a small slider a third of the way from the top. Orihime walked over to the door and opened the slider, peering through the small window.

"It's all black," she said, looking back at Grimmjow. "I can't tell what's there."

"Have you tried going through?" he asked. "The only true way to know what is in a place is to go there and see for yourself." He turned his face to her, revealing the right side of his jaw was missing. It was bone now, with a few bits of rotting flesh hanging in the empty cavity. "Who knows? _It might be fun..._"

Orihime gripped the door latch.

"_Of course,"_ the man followed up, _"it could be dangerous; it is your world after all."_

She slid the latch open and tugged on the door, causing it to swing open with a creak. "If it's my world, then nothing in it can hurt me," she said, definitively.

Then she stepped forward, soon disappearing into the consuming darkness.

"Good luck," Grimmjow said, starting to dissolve away, "you're gonna need it..."

_to be continued..._

**Wonderland**

**Chapter 1: Item Get**

As she stepped over the threshold Orihime suddenly found herself in a dreary forest; everywhere she looked there were dead trees that looked ready to fall over at any moment. (No leaves, of course.) Through the dead branches she could see a gray sky, the sun hidden behind the omnipresent clouds. There was also a distinct lack animal sounds as well; the silence was almost stifling.

Out of curiosity she walked over to one of the trees and tried to run her hand along one of it's branches. When she did, it began to dissolve away into ash, started at the point she touched and moving outward.

A flash of movement caught her eye as the last of the ash fell to the ground, like a squirrel scurrying out off sight when you try to get a better look at it. It looked much bigger than a squirrel, though. She hadn't heard any noises in this place so far, save for the dull crunching her feet made on the ground. She walked over to another tree, the one she thought she saw the-

Pain erupted in the back of her skull, and she crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

As consciousness slowly returned to her, she noticed that she felt strangely cramped. When she opened her eyes she saw she was tied up and stuffed between to rocks that were close together.

"It's awake now, Dee-Dee!" an voice said from out of her vision. It's was a girl's voice, and sounded younger than Orihime, at least ten years old.

"Yes it is," another equally young voice responded. Orihime wished she had more leeway to turn her head, so she could get a good look at who was talking.

"She looks tasty...," the first one said, "Can we eat her now, please?"

"She doesn't look read yet, Dum-Dum," the other said thoughtfully, "...she needs tenderizing." (This didn't sound good...)

"Ooh, can I use Mr. Shiny?" the one apparently called "Dum-Dum" asked excitedly.

"Yup! You go dig him out while I prepare the meat!"

_That doesn't sound good,_ Orihime thought. She felt herself being pulled out of whatever crevice she was shoved into, and then being dragged along the ground. As luck would have it, she was dragged so that her good eye was always facing the ground.

"This is our best catch yet!" the first girl said to herself as she dragged Orihime along the ground, "So much bigger than the Momoraths we usually catch, or that wild pig last week...maybe the Queen will give us some tarts if we bring her its head; tarts are better than Momeraths any day!" The girl continued muttering similar things as she suddenly threw Orihime against a tree. At least, it felt like tree bark that her back slammed against. The she felt a rope being tied around her hands.

"You're a real find," the girl "Dee-Dee" said as she tied Orihime's feet together, "and real pretty too; almost like Her..."

The girl stopped for a moment and regarded her curiously, giving Orihime time of her own to study her captor. She was a young girl about ten like she'd assumed, and had short black that hung down around her neck. She wore shorts, suspenders, and a white t-shirt (all were ratty), and a beanie cap with a little propeller on it on her head. She both looked and smelled like she hadn't bathed in weeks.

"Either way, Dum-Dum and I are going to eat _good_ tonight!" Dee-Dee said gleefully, bouncing over to a rope hanging from another branch. She began pulling it down, and Orihime suddenly felt something tugging her feet into the air.

A moment alter she was suspended upside down.

"Now just wait right here while I find Mr. Carpenter, then we can really have some fun until Dum-Dum gets back with Mr. Shiny." She tied off the rope to a root that came above the ground and ran off to get "Mr. Carpenter", whoever that was.

"You seem a bit hung up," Grimmjow said, suddenly materializing on the underside of a branch in her line of sight, reclining longways on it, "maybe I should come back when you're free again..."

"Or you could help me down from here," Orihime said, clearly not in the mood for games in her current predicament. Her blood was all rushing to her head, which didn't help things in the slightest.

"Now why would I do a thing like that?" he asked coyly. "After all, 'nothing in your world can hurt you'. That's what you said, wasn't it?"

"Very funny, now will you help me get do-" Before she could finish her question, the White Thing (Grimmjow called her the Rabbit) ran into the midst of the camp, fretting about.

"_Oh, I'm going to be late again..._" the Rabbit muttered, nervously rubbing her wrists, _"She's going to chop my head off if I'm late again, oh dear oh dear..."_

And as quickly as she came she ran away just as fast, disappearing into a set of hedges.

"Weren't you running after her?" the jawless man (well, half a jaw) asked.

"Help me down," Orihime demanded. _"Now."_

"Oh gee," he said with mock disappointment, "I'd _love _to, but-"

"I don't care for your excuses," she said, starting to lose her patience, "get me down from here before I carve out your intestines and choke you with them."

For a moment he said nothing, starting at the girl hanging upside down as if trying to solve the Ultimate Question.

"I suppose I could help you down," the strange man said eventually, "but this will be the only time I can help you, and you'll need to do something for me in return later on. Do we have a deal?"

Orihime nodded.

"Watch your head!" he called, forming one of his finger nails into a claw. He slid it across the rope holding her up, and she landed on the ground with an "Oof!", hastily untying her bonds.

Unfortunately, "Dee-Dee" came back.

"How the fuck did you get down?" she asked, holding a carpenter's hammer (Get the pun?) in her left hand.

Orihime looked back at the tree, but the man without a jaw was nowhere to be found.

She turned back to the young girl, only to find her rushing forward brandishing her hammer. Orihime jumped out of the way, not wishing to be knocked cold again. She also wished she had a weapon of her own to this little shit with.

On pure reflex she grabbed Mr. Carpenter as the girl swung it, wrenching it (Another pun!) out of her grasp when she realized she was holding it. She then swung it at the girl, hitting her on the side of the head and knocking her back. Orihime kept up her assault, not stopping even when blood began to spatter on her face. When she finally stopped, "Dee-Dee"'s face was an unrecognizable pile of mush.

"Dee-Dee, I found Mr. Shiny!" the other girl called, skipping up the the scene, "I hope you saved enough for- KYAAAAAAAH!" She was dressed similar to "Dee-Dee", only her hair was short and light brown. "...Dee-Dee?"

"I don't appreciate being tied up," Orihime said, walking slowly to the trembling girl, "or eaten, for that matter." She stepped closer, the girl now trembling so much she dropped the large kitchen knife she was holding. (Her shorts were looking damp as well.)

"Now," she said, picking up the knife the girl dropped, "what to do about you..." She dropped the hammer and regarded the knife curiously, then back to the girl. She then grabbed the girl by the neck, slamming her to the ground and holding her there, "I think I'll start with your ears."

The girl was about to scream again, but Orihime quickly put her hand over the tiny girl's mouth, preventing her from crying out. She stuck the knife in the ground for a moment (by the girl's right ear) and tore another bit of her dress off, sticking in "Dum-Dum"'s mouth. Her prey now sufficiently gagged Orihime went hacking off the girl's ears, relishing in the muffled screams that came as a result of her cutting. The girl thrashed about, hoping to escape her tormentor, but all the ended up doing was making the cuts deeper.

"There," Orihime said as she ripped the last of the ear off (eliciting a another whimpering squeal of pain), "much better. Although..." She dug her hand in the girl's eye socket, pulling her eye out slowly before doing the same to the other one.

"Jesus sister, you're more twisted than I thought you were," Grimmjow said, appearing behind her suddenly, "and that's saying something since I live in this world."

"I don't appreciate being made someone's bitch," Orihime said, wiping a bit of blood from her good eye as she regarded her handiwork.

"Well, she's certainly gonna have a harder time finding people to eat, that's for sure." He then poofed onto the tree again, holding a picket sign in the shape of an arrow with a crudely draw rabbit on it, "So are ya still going after that Rabbit?"

"Of course," she said, "but I don't like I said, I'm nobody's bitch, and if you fuck with me I'll fuck you right back."

"Then I'd best not get on your bad side," Grimmjow said, scratching something in his teeth through the hole in his jaw.

Ignoring her blue haired stalker, she picked up the knife (it just felt right in her hands) and headed through the hedges she saw the White Rabbit disappear into, leaving "Dum-Dum" to writhe in agony.

_to be continue..._

**Wonderland **

**Chapter 2: Strange Substances**

The brush and the bramble and the branches scraped against her exposed arms and legs. Orihime wished they would all go to hell, all these things that were hindering her search for the elusive Rabbit. On top of that her dress didn't seem like it would hold up for mu longer; it wasn't in great shape to begin with, and throughout her journey here it had been getting steadily smaller from the constant need to cannibalize it.

That, and she was still getting used to seeing out of one eye.

Fortunately, she could see the light of a clearing up ahead, so she could take proper stock of herself then.

She emerged through the brush ahead (some flowers nipped at her heels), and took a step back in surprise. She didn't normal find many things surprising, but this was strange even for her: in the clearing was a long table, probably about thirty feet long, laden with all sorts of beakers and phials and burners and needles and liquid tracks and jars and jars of chemicals.

"Oh, it looks we have a new guest!" someone announced from behind the brewing table. A moment later a dark skinned woman wearing a black leotard popped out from behind the mess, an oversized and garish top hat on her head. "And what might your name be?"

"Orihime, but could you tell me where the whi-"

"No time for any of that," the woman in the hat interrupted, leaping over to her, "you just simply _have_ to try my Tea!" She shoved a syringe in Orihime's face.

Despite the needle being shoved directly in her field of vision it wasn't very big, and passed it Orihime could see a large man (who also had dark skin) hanging on a large cross, IV's stuck all the way up his very muscular arms. Also, for some reason, he had droopy rabbit ears that hung out of the shaggy hair.

"What's with him?" she asked, pushing the needle away from her face.

"Oh, him?" the Top Hat Woman gestured to the Hanging Man, "He's graciously volunteered to test out all the new kind of Tea I make! Which reminds me..." The Top Hat Woman leaped over to the large cross yanking what looked like an empty canister out from behind it. She then leaped to her workbench, poured a brown looking liquid into the canister, leaped back to the cross, and reattached it. A sigh of contentment escaped his lips a moment later.

"My Tea is the best in all the land!" the Top Hat Woman announced proudly, "Able to take you to far away places and reveal the mysteries of life, it's an experience you'll never want to quit!" She held out the syringe to Orihime again, "So, wanna try some?"

Orihime just stared at it skeptically.

"Still don't trust me, eh?" Top Hat Woman continued, "Well, listen to this satisfied customer!" She reached behind the cross again, this time puling out a mousy looking girl with her hair in a bun.

She looked incredibly zoned out.

"Well go on," the Top Hat Woman prompted, "tell the nice lady how much you enjoy my special Tea!" She kicked the girl after a moment of silence.

"It's...it's really good, I've...never felt...better..."

"See?" She held out the syringe to Orihime one last time, "Want to see wonders beyond your wildest dreams?" When Orihime still looked hesitant, the Top Hat Woman said "It could even show you the path to find the Rabbit you're looking for..."

Orihime took the syringe and slid the needle under her skin, pressing the plunger down as far as it could go.

"Excellent!" Top Hat Woman cheered, "Be prepared to exp_erie_nce the W_On__**d**__eR_ an**D** plE_a_**s**_U_re _OF_ Y**or**_u__**I**_ch**i**'s FABULOUS S_p_e**c**i**Al Tea!**"

The rest of what the Top Hat Woman (whose name was Yoruichi, apparently) said became too garbled to understand as her face began to melt away until only the bone was left, after which beetles began crawling out from under her hat as she shrunk down until she was the size of a walnut, as little momeraths dancing all over it's scaly surface. The moving floor then brought her to a giant teapot with train wheels on it, chugging along the deep blue sea as it made its way through the mountains. Over hill and over dale the trumpets called, leading the polymuggens out of the swamp where they lived and out onto the freeway, where the horse/carriages were pumping their front leg so they wouldn't get overtaken by their rear wheels. One of the horses ran over a small teacup in the middle of the road and flipped off the road into a grassy knoll and the world started to crumble away.

She began to fall upward again, getting farther and farther away from the ground as the sky opened it's wide mouth to receive her. Inside the mouth was a world made of every color imaginable, and when the people spoke, their words became the colors the world was made of. Orihime tried to sing, but all the came out of her mouth was an inky black substance that out_undo_partial_alloc: mouth until it covered every inch of this place until there wasn't a speck of color left anywhere, this is, until blood started pouring from holes unseen in the walls, threatening to drown the one eye'd girl in a flood of crimson liquid drained from the veins of a hundred sorry victims that totally deserved it of course they did they were all sheep they wouldn't know what to do for themselves if the solution came and fucked their eye sockets they were dead anyway a kind of living death if you will it was for their own if (group_info-blocks[0] != group_info-small_block) I need scissors! 64!{int i;for (i = 0; i group_info-nblocks; i++)free_page((unsigned long)group_info-blocks[i]); and if no one had done anything they they would have kept on going and going until they would have burned themselves out and died in their piles of shitty boy bands celebrity gossip and In the melodious cacophony of the waking orchestra the final player slowly approaches the final seat, unwilling to pluck the broken instrument in her hands.

She just sits there, the Shell of a soul that once was. Ignorant, she walks toward the beginning, molting wings ascend her to the floor.

Soon, the end will make way for the beginning.

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unsigned int cp_count = min(NGROUPS_PER_BLOCK, count); course just as she reached the shore, now drenched in blood.

"You need to get up now," Grimmjow's floating head told her urgently, "time's running out and you quarry is getting away!"

Then she felt pain encircling her neck, and it was becoming harder and harder to breath.

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

After that brief moment of clarity Orihime suddenly became hyper aware of her immediate surroundings. Particularly, the fact that she was lying on her back and the Top Hat Woman was trying to strangle her. Instinctively she lashed out, slashing Top Hat Woman across her face. Top Hat Woman flung herself back, clutching her face and crying out in pain. Oh yeah, she was still holding Mr. Shiny. _Man_, that stuff she took was dangerous! Well, she wasn't eating or drinking anything else while she was here; who knows what weird shit would happen if she accidentally ate a bit of cake that was lying around?

She picked herself up (Yoruichi was cursing her) and took stock of the situation; the large man with the floppy ears was still hung up on the cross, his breathing shallow but even. The mousy girl was leaning against the worktable, her chest cavity looking like it exploded; she was quite clearly dead.

She turned her attention back to the Top Hat Woman, "I have some questions for you."

"Fuck you _bitch_," Top Hat Woman growled, "I'd sooner slit my throat than tell _you_ anything..."

Orihime grabbed the syringe from the ground and threw it at the Top Hat Woman, sticking right in her eye.

"I don't know if there was any 'Tea' left in that, but I imagine it hurts like a bitch anyways." She walked over the dapper woman, grabbed her by the hair, and held Mr. Shiny against her throat, "Unless you want me to do a lot worse, and believe me, _I can_, you'll start being a little more cooperative."

"Fine," Top Hat Woman grunted, clearly trying (and kinda sorta was succeeding in) overcoming the pain she was in, "what do you want to know?"

"For starters," she said, "why is everyone I meet trying to kill me?"

"Well, quite simply, you have a bounty on your head by the Queen," Top Hat Woman explained simply, "Whoever brings her your head get's their greatest wish! Imagine: my Special Tea, mass produced and being taken by everyone in-AAARRGGHH!"

Orihime had stuck the knife in the Top Hat Woman's side.

"Who's this 'Queen'?" Orihime asked. Forcefully. "And why does she want me dead?"

"First of all- Rrrrr!- how the hell could you not know who the Queen is? She's only the tyrannical ruler of everywhere, duh!- OW! Jeez...As for the second point, I haven't the foggiest...foggiest...foggerest...Flogers..."

"Sigh..._fuck_," Orihime groaned, letting the Top Hat Woman drop to the ground as she began babbling nonsense. "I guess there was some Tea left in that needle after all..."

"He he, your words become colors when they leave your mouth!" the Top Hat Woman giggled.

Orihime turned and walked in the direction of a dilapidated looking mansion in the distance.

"You're not gonna stay and finish her off?" Grimmjow asked, hanging from tree branch with one hand.

"If that other girl was any indication she'll die soon enough on her own; and even if she survives she'll be in no condition to follow me before I get to that mansion."

Grimmjow suddenly went silent, his creepy smile (half a smile) drooping into a frown, "I wouldn't go in there if I were you; the guy that lives there makes the those twins and the lady with the hat seem friendly by comparison. Be on your guard."

"I will," she said, heading off resolutely for her next destination and what lay in wait for her there.

_to be continued..._

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

_A/N: This was an idea I had around Christmas time that festered in my mind until it manifested into this. If you know my work, then it should come as no surprise that this is as dark and macabre as it is. If you've read _Deteriorate_ then it should come as no surprise that I made Orihime cold and sadistic. She's always had the potential for this sort of role, what with her troubled past in cannon Bleach, though sadly not many authors take advantage of this. _

_I might try to finish this up again, but not for a while at this time. I think my next Horror project will have something to do with the color blood and and icon of Egypt. Also; the quiet. _


End file.
